Giorgio Sironi has posted the other side of the PHP/Java envy perspective in this new article on DZone.com - five things that Java envies PHP for (The first article is here offering the opposite perspective).

The comparison is only on web applications and dynamic websites, as PHP does not compete on the desktop. I am a PHP programmer, but I work in Java on university-related projects. If you notice something is missing from the comparisons in this list, feel free to comment and complete my depiction of Java features, and of PHP too.

His list of five things includes that there's no compilation required in PHP applications (running is "compiling"), that there's a unified platform to work on and that there's a lot more included "out of the box" than with Java (like database connectivity).